Friday, November 18, 2011

Loosing the important data is always unfortunate no matter it is deleted accidentally or unknowingly! No matter which OS you are using, no matter at what designation you are working, data loss is always worst thing could ever happen to anyone. Surveys says out of the total, maximum cases of data loss is seen due to human mistake but defiantly that does not mean data could not loose by any other way!

Keeping all this in mind Mac developers designed an user friendly operating system and made it so robust that it can handle many of such cases itself. But still, we can not deny the fact that all files are not completely safe in the Mac drive, they are also prone to get lost due to various other reasons. True, data could be lost due to various reasons and worst is they may vary from accidental deletion, file system corruption, bad sector generation, to some physical damage in Mac hard drive. File system corruption is one of the frequently occurred damage that may make mac files inaccessible. Some of the file system errors are:

Error - Not a Macintosh disk

Error - Cannot access because a disk error occurred

Error - Bad master directory block.

Error - This disk is unreadable by this computer. Do you want to initialize the disk

Due to this simple reason, taking proper backup of all of the important data is always suggested. Mac owners themselves added feature of automatic backup with Mac to give to perfect Mac experience.

But there are situations when even the backup fails and we are left with nothing but to use mac file recovery utility to get those files back. No doubt reliable Mac file recovery software can work the best in case of valuable data loss, but if data is important up to that extend that it can effect your financial or social status then creating replica is always a nice idea. Therefore, all these thoughts make experts to suggest hard disk cloning. A hard disk cloning is the technique of making exact replica of entire hard drive or logical volumes. This process includes transfer of data of one hard drive to another disk. Thus, the cloned copy of the hard drive should be saved at the safer location and can be used at any time to restore the lost data. But, in order to clone a drive we need another drive with same or higher capacity.

Friday, October 21, 2011

Data recovery is one of the most technical and complex activity because it is directly associated with the device i.e. hard drive which itself is so complex. Leave the business men it is enough to increase headache level of even some IT professionals. That is one of the many reasons that data recovery companies can easily charge smart amount, sometimes even for any small task. This article will provide you some basic knowledge of data recovery:-

Hard Disk Basics
Computer hard drive is a storage device which stores data into metal oxide platters. It has to perform continuous and very fast rotation (About the rate of 12,000 rpm) while read/write operations. The One, which perform this read/write operation on the Meta oxide platter, in the form of magnetic charge, is called head. A drive can have multiple read and write head and each head to perform operation smoothly and quickly. But this also arose a problem that each head can crash independently, so probability of head crash always remain higher especially when temperature of disk started increasing due to kinetic energy produced due to head motions. The main part of drive is controller board which unique for every individual drive located in outer part of the platters and it contains firmware zone, the firmware zone is the area which communicate with the computer directly.

Type of hard disk failure:
Hard disks are always handle with care because they are very sensitive and above all they actually having our precious data. Worst is they can suffer damage in different ways (described below) and with each type of damage in hard disk there remain possibility of data loss. Let discuss each type of damage and probability of data loss and its recovery:Logical Errors: Logical errors of the are most simple (sometime most complex) type of error. These errors are meant for file system corruption, not affecting the data directly. Symptoms: File inaccessible, system response increases and program may not work properly Solution: Such errors are seems to be simple, nothing is going to happen wrong the data until and using right data recovery software you can get your data back. Here “right” also means that choosing inappropriate data recovery software can make your data beyond recovery. Logical errors are simple but complicated errors you can get your data back by using branded mac file recovery software. Chances of recovery of data are very much high.

Mechanical Failure: Such errors are more serious and it may cause partial or full data loss. These type of errors occur due to head crash at the time it performing read/write operation on platters. Symptoms: Hard Drive becomes noisy!! Most probably clicking or grinding noise start flushing out Solution: This is most technical part which needs professional training to solve it. Replacement of read/write head is to be done manually. So, you might have to send hard drive to data recovery lab. Make sure about the privacy policies of the company before sending the hard drive because your hard drive may have your personal data that you would not like to share with anyone. Such errors need both time and money and chances of recovery is totally unpredictable.

Bad Sectors: These are the areas which OS usually ignore while performing reading and writing operations. These are like big holes in the road which need to be avoided by drivers. Symptoms: As such no indication will be shown for bad sectors
Solution: It could happen anytime with hard drive and the data present in that section would become inaccessible. So best solution is just to avoid loss that may happen due to bad sector. So prepare cloning or imaging of the hard drive can be a good preparation against bad sector.

Researchers say that most of the time data loss happens due to the human mistakes. Follow the points below to reduce the chances of data loss:
• Do not avoid any uncertainty of the system
• Do not trash out the things which you are not sure about.
• Always keep backup of your important data
• Keep trusted mac data recovery software handy

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Remember the days of windows, when you decided to leave the virus infected world for glamorous Mac world! After having lots of fun with Mac in its honeymoon period are you feeling something missing from your dearest Mac? With the passing time, is your Mac getting slow day by day? If yes! Nothing to worry about, just you need to clean up your Mac hard drive. Some of you may be started feeling delay in booting of the system, isn't you?

Lets start with cleaning Boot Volume:
First of all try to find out what process Mac loads when it booted up. Go to system preference and then user accounts at “login item” tab.

All the process will be listed in front of you which your Mac have to load while booting. Make sure all the process listed here are well known by you. Most of the process which you will find here will be “*Helper” where * is any string. As for example shown in image “iTuneHelper”. If in case you find anything for which you are not sure about just click “-” after selecting it.

Find Number of Process Running:

If your Mac is late responsive that is you have to wait for process to start after initiating the same. You might have to check this total number of process running at the time time. Quit unimportant process that may immediate solution of processing speed. To see the same go to Application->Utility->Activity Monitor

Make a list of all such softwares and un-install them safely for permanent cure of all such issues. But problem here is Apple has not shipped any un installer though just drag and drop may install that application but thats not proper un-install some of the files will remain untouched there. So it is better idea to use any uni-nstaller for installing the Apps.12

Speedup Mac Software
The task which you have done so far is to find out the unwanted apps in the Mac and still need to do much more to speedup your Mac. To make above process simple here is one software named Speedup Mac by Stellar. That software can clean your Mac and also un-install the unwanted applications, widgets safely.

So, first part of the software will automatically search and find unwanted files such as language binaries, duplicated files and large files etc in your Mac or in particular volume and other section make proper un-installing very easy.

.Continue reading about how Stellar Speedup Mac works & its feature in next post

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Hard drive is nothing but data warehouse where files is stored in certain logical manner. The operating system has responsibility to define these logics which are commonly known as file systems. Mac OS X is considered as worlds most powerful operating system in term of security, functionality and usablity. The file system which they use is HFS+ (journaled) which is one of the best well defined file system of the world. But despite of all above feature data loss is very common in Mac.

The most common reasons of data loss in Mac is unexpected file system crash. Some of them are listed below-

All above problems are very common in Mac. Worst is it might happen to anyone anytime, it may happen when you woke up in the morning and your Mac refuses to boot and all the files inside the Mac would simply become inaccessible. If that happened due to any file system error disk utility can repair it easily but chances of data loss is mostly likely but if happened due to hardware failure you would need another Mac supported hardware to access that Mac.

In case of file system error, simple hardware verification is more than enough to solve any such issue (to read more visit “http://drive-recovery-mac.blogspot.com/2011/06/file-system-verification-failed-my.html). Although chances of data loss is very less in this case but still keeping mac file recovery software is always keep your mind out from sense of data loss. Yes choosing such software is also not an easy job but once you chose it will always keep you aways from sense of danger.

Other reason of boot failure is hardware issues. If you were facing boot failure due to hardware failure you need to have another Mac supported OS X installed hardware (or another Mac) to resolve this issue. To resolve this limitation Apple introduce new features with latest OS X lion release and they are-

Recovery Hard Drive – The auto installed hard drive hidden partition that could be useful to boot Mac OS X in time of need.

Disk Assistance - It is same as recovery partition but Apple made it supported to external drive. (Visit Lion Recovery Disk Assistant for complete information)

If you are using lion then this task is again not that much complicated. You only need to press “option” key while booting the Mac and choose recovery disk to boot the Mac. But if you are using any other Mac version (external hardware) you need to boot your Mac targeting that disk. Once you boot your Mac you can repair any issues simply by using disk utilities or any third party Mac tools.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Recovering data from Mac is no more panic. There are number of professional promising to provide hundred percent recovery from Mac hard drive. Only thing that is important is the time when you realize you need to recover data after deleting it from any Mac volume. If you have realized soon within minutes or before going to re-use the mac hard drive after deleting file from it than you are lucky enough and chances of getting cent percent recovery is very bright. But if you realize data loss after performing heavy operations on the drive the chances of getting whole data back become bit less and also expensive.

The first thought that came in human mind that Shit Man! How careless I am, I must have to take backup. But taking backup is not only the solution of this panic. However it could happen with a person who is very much sensitive in data backups. Are you sure about the person who always take data backup in the night before sleeping can never face data loss? NO not exactly. My point is that person could loss most recent data due to many reasons such as virus, accidental shut down etc. during any hour before 12 at night. I have some points to keep you away from this panic and that are:

Option 1 –The fastest, easiest and of course cheapest way to recover files is from latest backup. For which I would always suggest to have incremental backup during every hour of the data (or any specific time according to importance of data). For this purpose time machine utility is provided in built with Mac OS X not only this there are many third party tool such as Stellar Shield is available for this purpose.

All these utilities will take image of data at particular point of time (set by user) and if data lost happened in any case it could be recoverable easily from this backup store. Best part of such backup is that it is automated so that there is no such fear if you forget to take backup you can meet data loss. You can get back your data without wasting much time.

Option 2-Second option is – Mac Data recovery Software. These are basically “to do yourself” utilities that are smart enough to recover data if accidentally deleted from your Mac volume. This option is bit more costly than the first one and also time taken to recover data is more. The third party recovery software such as Stellar Phoenix mac data recovery software is well known name in this field.

The recovery of data from Mac is become so simple with easy to understand GUI that less technical or no technical person and work easily. If you are using Mac OS X Lion then you need to be little bit more conscious while going to buy Mac data recovery software because it could be possible that the software which you are going to order is Lion compatibility. However most of the product announced its compatibility with OS X Lion, Stellar Phoenix Mac data recovery software also announced & proved its compatibility with OS X Lion last week.

Option 3:Contact expert Mac data recovery software professionals. If your Mac is severely affected or not in use from so many days or worst is using hard drive for 2-3 months and then need recover the data. These are cases where chances of data recovery is not cent percent. This is also most expensive than option 1 and 2.

Monday, August 29, 2011

Data loss during software updation is one of the most commonly found reasons of the loss. The reason behind data loss due to software upgrade is that during updation large number of read and write operations occurred simultaneously and if system configuration is not such that it can handle the same, it results to accidental shut down which could lead to data loss.

I have recently faced data loss last month when I was upgrading to OS X Lion from snow leopard. Everything went smoothly except when I logged in to OS X Lion I found my important files missing. I was like bearing 10 thousand volt electric shock!! I remembered that I have bought Stellar Phoenix Mac data recovery software last year but problem is I have recently upgraded to Mac OS X Lion and I was not sure whether it could recover or not. But I decided to give it a try...

It was so relaxing to see the softwares welcome screen with following four scanning options:

Quick Recovery

Deleted File recovery

Formatted media/Los file recovery

Search file/deleted folder

As I was well aware of this software from before so without wasting even single second I clicked on “Deleted File Recovery”

The screen now in front of me is educating
about what Deleted File Recovery will do? It saying use this option to recover the files that has been deleted accidentally . It scans unused blocks of to recover deleted files.

After choosing the volume and it the scanning process begins as shown in figure:

It is time taking process because software is going to scan all unused block in the volume for the lost files. After sometime it list all the deleted files in front of me. I previewed all my important files before going for actual recovery. I was well aware that if I am going to recover all files it will take long time so I used filter option present in the below left of the screen. As in my case I wanted to recover only some web files (.html) for now. Also, I have added one fake file format “*.abcd” to test its accuracy.

Now its time for actual recovery so I just clicked continue and process started. After few hours I when process stopped I found my all those files in my destination drive.

I was so afraid because I was not sure about the Stellar phoenix Mac Data recovery whether it will work on OS X Lion or not. But this trust worthy software by Stellar did not make me unhappy in the time when I need it most.